By Julia Quinn

Blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda yak yak yak. I made it to the 48% mark and then had to skip through to the end. Lots of talk but no wit or humor in the conversation in my opinion. The heroine was the stock Tomboy getting herself into all kinds of trouble in pants plus she wasn’t very likable. She was thoughtless of her younger sister who actually was a pretty interesting character. For some reason she managed her father’s estates but why? Her father was perfectly competent as far as I could see. Her younger brother (Edmund Bridgerton the dead father of what will become the Bridgerton clan) would inherit and take over the estates. It does dawn on her that her future looks pretty bleak and she would just be a hanger-on without marriage and a home of her own. But it’s not a wake-up call. She doesn’t change a thing about her life or attitudes. There is no character arc except her change in her feelings towards the hero who was a sober, conservative, and responsible older son. Nothing more to see here, really, other than the very predictable hate to love romance between two opposites.

I was further annoyed by Julia Quinn injecting 21st-century speech into the dialogue of the 18th century. “I’ll take that as a yes;” “You need to get out more,” she deadpanned. “Oh, please,” she said impatiently. ” “Thank you, that’s very kind of you?” Andrew echoed. “Who are you?”, “gave her a lopsided grimace and a shrug—code universal for I-haven’t-a-clue. Plus everything was bloody this and bloody that. 40 times in the book. Despite the weaknesses in her Bridgerton stories, Julia can spin a pretty good tale. The family’s adventures make you want to read more about the subsequent members of the family and to check back on the ones you’ve already read about. I’ve already gone on to my re-reading of Book #3 because my name came up with the library and am enjoying it pretty well. But this was a lazy half-hearted effort, in my opinion. A failed attempt to recapture the magic of the original Bridgerton family saga.

January 21, 2021